I was a big fan of Brandon Taylor's first book, Real Life, and was slightly disappointed when I didn't love this one as much. However, I did really enjoy this intertwined collection of short stories, and Taylor writes a range of emotions so well.

If anyone could have gotten me over the short story hump, I thought it would be Brandon Taylor. I was impressed by Real Life, his debut, and thought I would dip my toe into his short story collection. But my challenges with the form still exist.

When I started the book, I was very impressed with the first story, Potluck, and connected to the character of Lionel. His voice, his situation, and his struggles all felt real to me and I wanted him to be ok. I felt for him in this social situation that he may have been too vulnerable to yet attempt, having just been released from a mental hospital after a suicide attempt. I was concerned for him. Anytime he showed up in the stories, I felt protective of him and wanted to see what would happen to him. But I didn't feel that with any of the other characters, or any of the other stories. I don't fault the author, but simply know my limitations with the form.

I do want to thank the publisher for granting me access to the ARC via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

While I find it hard to find short-story collections that engage me, Brandon Taylor never ceases to amaze me. His talent for story-telling continues to amaze me with each book and story her shares with the world.

A bit of a mixed bag and a bit of a letdown for me. It felt as though each and every time I started to REALLY get invested in the characters within each short story, the story would then abruptly end. That isn’t to say that there weren’t whole stories I enjoyed, but for the most part it was just moments in some of the short stories that I connected with or I thought were GROUNDBREAKING. My favorites were : Little Beast, Filthy Animals, and Anne of Cleves.

Most of the time, short story collections are not my thing so it could’ve very well been a me problem and not the fault of the author. I still really want to read Real Life by Brandon Taylor, but this may have knocked it down a few pegs on my tbr.

Brandon Taylor’s writing in Filthy Animals is a thing of beauty! I found myself thinking how spot-on the range of emotions was conveyed and how connected an ache between expectations and desires can be intrinsically universal even if physically disparate.

I highly recommend this collection to contemporary fiction and short story readers!

Thank you Penguin Random House and Netgalley for the Advanced Reader's Copy!

Now available.

Brandon Taylor weaves a darkly comic, lonely New York as seen through the love trials of Lionel and his ever expanding concerto of lovers and friends. I loved how Lionel's universe is so self-contained, how it expands and then shrinks back down.

This book came highly recommended and did not disappoint. I have yet to read Brandon Taylor's previous novel but look forward to it even more after reading this book.

No story here is too long or too short -- they are perfect in their own, emotionally devastating ways. It's quickly apparent Taylor is capable of composing timeless stories meant to stir us into contemplation in our present times. I'm a cynic at heart so when I found myself breathless during Anne of Cleves, I needed more. I feel like a genuine idiot for sleeping on this Alice Munro level of talent.

There's something about Brandon Taylor's writing style that I don't care for. His prose is very long-winded and distracting. My mind kept wandering during this story collection. I love reading short stories and I must admit, I was disappointed. I appreciated the hard-hitting discussions the various characters faced, but the overall writing style is what did me in. I didn't hate this book, but I didn't love it either. Middle of the road for me.

Subtle and beautiful descriptive writing that continues to move through the perspective of a narrator who is a person out of a socially prescribed context. A gay man in a sexually fluid world of dancers who has left academia and is scraping by being a proctor for exams. The work is described in a delicate and most tender way and physical intimacy while not violent steps shy of tasteful, but normalizing the juxtaposition of people, walks of life and gay/bisexual intersection is something Taylor does effectively. I love the author’s voice and tone, but I just can’t stay with Taylor’s storylines. He is the Sally Rooney of his time with hints of eloquent Baldwin, though for me Taylor is a one note author.

Brandon Taylor's debut novel, Real Life, was one of my favorites of 2020. I was captivated by his characters and his ability to capture the nuance of so many interconnected relationships. Filthy Animals has so much of what I loved about his debut. Brandon is unquestionably a brilliant writer and his ability to capture emotion and anxieties of his characters is next level. He isn't afraid to put his reader into uncomfortable spaces and make them feel what he wants them to feel. The collection is structured around a series of connected stories telling a single narrative through line, broken up with unrelated short stories. The connected stories read a lot like Real Life, digging into the characters personal lives as they become more and more intertwined. I love this about Taylor's work and I will read everything he puts out in the future.

I struggled with Real Life, putting it down halfway through and not picking it up, feeling too claustrophic in the protagonist's warped consciousness. But this collection of stories was refreshingly more open and airy. Though many of the characters are as myopic as Wallace is in Real Life, they're interestingly balanced and countered by the myopia of others. Sometimes this just happens story-to-story, but it's especially well-handled in the novella-in-stories about an open couple on a college campus who get interested in a third. Every other story in the book jumps back to this throughline, showing a different perspective, a different angle, sometimes through a different character's POV, and sometimes just through a different part of that character's life. Taylor's stories are photographic and minor, turning on small gestures, words, and actions. They resist reparative endings or reparative anythings. He's a great inheritor of the mid-twentieth-century American short story tradition. I honestly thought of Carver when reading them, though they'd make strange bedfellows. I found the sensitivity, the moments of insight, and most of all the resistance to giving a "message" quite moving.

Following his stunning debut novel “Real Life,” this year Brandon Taylor blesses us with a short story collection that does not disappoint. “Filthy Animals” is unlike any collection of stories that I have read. It is unique by providing a work of fiction that weaves together these stories to create one larger narrative that will rock any reader to their core. Taylor’s writing is brilliant, he precisely examines his character’s head space, which allows his reader to connect to the fiction profoundly. As a reader, I felt the deep sense of loneliness that the character in the first short story felt. With “Mass” I understood the main character’s anxiety towards trying to be “more than good.” In “Anne of Cleves” the language that Taylor gives to desire brought chills to my body. I could keep going. Ultimately, Brandon Taylor investigates the complexities of the human experience by illustrating, with an incredible cast of characters, how underneath it all the traits that are considered filthy are what makes us more human. On top of all that, these stories are queer as f*ck! We can’t do anything but stan and be grateful for this literature. “Filthy Animals” is a strong collection of stories from a writer that continues to make it clear that he came to slay.

These linked story stories were so interesting. Brandon Taylor knows exactly how to build characters and I was in awe of his ability to do so within such few pages.

Such a powerful and brilliant story - wow - absolutely astonishing! I absolutely fell in love with this story and highly recommend it!

I start this by saying that I love Taylor as an author and writer, he’s extremely talented and I love seeing LGBT+ voices getting so much hype. I will also say that I am not really a short story collection reader, I much prefer the story to be fleshed out into a novel but I still wanted to give this one a try because I have loved previous work from this author.
This is definitely more of a me thing and it doesn’t mean this book is bad by any means but I personally just didn’t really connect with it and I felt like the short story format left a lot to be desired.

This book did one of my favorite things in a short story collection—it followed a cast of loosely connected characters and told pieces from each of their points of views. It was haunting, dark, and vulnerable, and assured Taylor as one of my new favorite authors.

I’m judging the L.A. Times 2020 and 2021 fiction contest. It’d be generous to call what I’m doing upon my first cursory glance—reading. I also don’t take this task lightly. As a fellow writer and lover of words and books, I took this position—in hopes of being a good literary citizen. My heart aches for all the writers who have a debut at this time. What I can share now is the thing that held my attention and got this book from the perspective pile into the read further pile.

I’m a long time fan of Brandon Taylor’s work… the first story Potluck was compelling in a way that I haven’t experienced in a lot of stories. Interested in seeing how these stories and characters lives intertwine. Was happy to see the same characters reappear in Flesh.

The writing style of this author just doesn’t flow with me. I prefer long descriptive sentences that flourish with detail rather than short, journalistic like writing that delivers information in a bite. Could not finish this book but I’m sure the story is good!

Very pleasantly surprised by this lovely little novel. Heartbreaking and haunting, these lightly related stories will stay with me for a long time.